Tonight I accidentally ordered a whole chicken. It was 8 dollars or so, so I thought it would be a meal with some rice or something. But no, it was just a whole fried chicken. This is why I usually eat with Matt who speaks and reads Korean. It was good though; it came with a mustard-wasabi sauce for dipping. Usually I eat more healthily. At school they serve lunch and it always rice, soup, random vegetable, kimchi, random fruit, and random meat. I like it. Another really good thing is these stuffed peppers I buy from this stand by my aparment. They are basically big peppers fried in batter, and they are stuffed with something, but I'm not sure what. It seems to be some mix of vegetables and sausage, or possibly intestines.

Last Saturday I saw an Apache helicopter flying overhead. And it appeared to be fully-armed too. Like, with Hellfire missiles and Hydra rockets (the names of these I know because of a SNES game I had in grade 8 called "Desert Strike"). Weird, also, yipes! A not so subtle reminder that North Korea is only 50km away. Although, you wouldn't know this from the map in my classroom, which depicts the Korean peninsula as a single country. Oh yeah, and I've heard you can take tours with the U.S. Army through the DMZ to a small village in North Korea. But it costs 50 bucks (that's like 6 chickens).

I climbed a big hill (or a really small mountain) the other day. It was the first time I was off the pavement since I got here, and it was nice simply for that fact. There is not a lot of greenspace here. And by "not a lot," I mean none. There was a flag at the top, and lots of people milling about. The same other day (Sunday), I was wandering aimlessly (a favourite activity of mine) around noon and I happened upon a small church that was letting out. So I stood there and watched the people, just because ... well, I've never seen a Korean church before. Nothing was really different. People walked out and nodded their heads to the pastor (probably) guy. Then a guy came up to me and said: "what is your nationality brother." I think he meant brother in the religious sense, since he was about 60 and, uh, Korean. Then he asked me if I was Roman Catholic, which I wasn't (and I haven't converted in the 3 days since).

"Prostestant?"

"Yes"

(I guess that's as accurate as anything. I knew it would be fruitless for me to try to explain more specifically. I mean, I can even explain it in English to a native speaker, let alone to myself, so ...)

That was the end of the conversation. He walked off to do Korean Roman Catholic things (Hail Mary Kims?). I didn't take it as a slight. The conversation resolved itself by its own volition, as Jerry Seinfeld would say. It's kind of funny that I take protestantism to be a catchall; whereas, I guess, obviously, it's a major differentiating thing to Catholics.

Anyway, this got me ruminating about the inescapable problem/necessity of belonging to groups. Specifically, the strange ways in which the groups a person belongs to compete for centrality, in terms of defining that person's identity. Like, obviously I don't belong to the large nation-group of Koreans. But, say, I was Roman Catholic, would my Catholicism be more central than my national identity? Would I then be part of a religious group that would be more central than my national-group? I.e., could I be in a Catholic group with Catholic Koreans that excluded non-Catholic Koreans. The answer is yes, of course, although it isn't likely. (The answer is always yes.) The point, however, is that I wonder if identity is like a currency. You only have so many chips to play with, and you're taxed every time you make an exchange. (I don't know why all this money language is seeping in here. It must be my proximity to Marxist countries (well, insofar as communist countries are Marxist, which I think is only loosely or vestigially--Shalandrew can correct me). Anyway, my main point is: blah, blah, blah it's 9:55 and my brain is no longer working properly which is causing me to talk about teenagerish issues such as identity. Also, my foot is asleep. The end.

Or is it? Not if you click on this link to see random hastily-taken pictures of mundane objects!